On this day in 2008, eight days before Pennsylvania Democrats went to the polls to vote in the state’s primary election, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York debated each other at the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia as they vied for their party’s presidential nomination.

Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News moderated the 90-minute televised debate.

Early on, Gibson cited Obama’s recent statement to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco “about small-town Pennsylvanians who have had tough economic times in recent years. And you said they get bitter, and they cling to guns or they cling to their religion or they cling to antipathy toward people who are not like them.”

“Well, I think there’s no doubt that I can see how people were offended,” Obama replied. “It’s not the first time that I’ve made, you know, a statement that was mangled up. It’s not going to be the last.”

But Obama contended that “the point I was making was that when people feel like Washington’s not listening to them, when they’re promised year after year, decade after decade, that their economic situation is going to change, and it doesn’t, then politically they end up focusing on those things that are constant, like religion. They end up feeling ‘This is a place where I can find some refugee. This is something that I can count on.’”

For her part, Clinton said: “I don’t believe that my grandfather or my father, or the many people whom I have had the privilege of knowing and meeting across Pennsylvania over many years, cling to religion when Washington is not listening to them. I think that is a fundamental, sort of, misunderstanding of the role of religion and faith in times that are good and times that are bad.”